The Ndebele’s beautiful simple beadwork in bright colours (at first they used glass beads, but today, plastic ones are cheaper) in capes and aprons and bracelets too is both adorning and significatory. Colours and patterns may be indications of social status such as whether a woman is married.

But while the beadwork of the Zulu and the Ndebele, for instance, may be confused, the vivid abstract geometric panels with which Ndebele women decorate (freehand) their rectangular mud-walled houses is something unique to that tribe. We all know the checkerboards, the herringbone, chevrons, diamonds and trapezoids, the black soot outlines, limestone whitewash, and the dark red and red-brown, sky blue, yellow-gold, green and sometimes pink hues of the wall patterns.

What may come as a surprise is that these patterns are a system of communication, they're symbolic. They both remember a luckless time of suffering, of slavery and forced removals, a time when their culture could have been annihilated but wasn't, as mothers passed on their skills to their daughters, skills with which they affirmed their cultural identity; and they convey the painter's individuality, personality, creativity, prayers, values and emotions.

Today, one may see the incorporation of images of electric lights, pools, telephones and airplanes in Ndebele art, symbols of the painter’s material aspirations.